


The Five

by infjpiper



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Minor Original Character(s), idk what this is, maybe im just tired of seeing dark!red stuff, might continue if enough people like it, military au?, spy au?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23757205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infjpiper/pseuds/infjpiper
Summary: Intelligence report:One - Believed to be able to create and attack with green energy blasts. Possibly wields a sword made of the same green energy. Least deadly.Two - Known to have immense strength and high damage output. Measurements indicate buildings could be split in two. Third most deadly.Three - Can create shields invincible to most materials, including bullets. Shields can also be used as projectiles, with seemingly infinite supply. Second most deadly.Four - Powerful psychic powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, and super-intelligence. Once captured, do not engage in conversation, no matter what. Fourth most deadly.Five - Powers largely unknown. Believed to be able to shape-shift, but this is unconfirmed. Almost certainly has more potent powers. DO NOT APPROACH. Most deadly.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 53





	The Five

**Author's Note:**

> sup. let me know if you like this and want to see more of this in comments because i don't know whether or not i want to continue this.

The first thing he notices is the sky. That’s the sky right? Big and blue and above everything else. It seems to encompass him with a feeling of warmth. Warmth. The next thing he notices is the sun. It’s too bright for him to keep looking at, so he turns away. But it feels nice on his face.

But this isn’t what he came here for, is it? He shakes his head. He’s here to make sure they bring food and water into the cell tonight. He’s starving and thirsty. He has to do this. He begins to walk across the grassy plain the aircraft dropped him off in. He approaches what appears to be the thing they told him about. A bunch of big dark green machines with long noses. There are people dressed in green sitting around it, laughing and eating something that looks delicious. His stomach growls. He hopes they bring him something like that tonight. But he knows they won’t.

Suddenly they see him. Some grab their black… guns. Yes, that’s what they told him those were. One of them holds up his hand, stopping the others, and shouts something at him that he can’t quite make out. But it doesn’t matter. He’s not here to listen to them. His arm shoots up in the air, and immediately a red translucent bubble forms around him. The men start to shoot, but their bullets don’t make even a single crack in his shield. They stop shooting and step back as they are illuminated by a red glow coming from around and behind him. Hundreds of them. Smaller shields. Made of the same red translucent energy that protects him now.

His open hand in the air curls into a fist. One of the men is speaking into a little device before they begin to rain down on them all. It’s just like the dummies in the training room at the lab. Tearing through the men and their machines like a hot knife through butter. Except there are more of them. Infinitely more. He hopes the doctors will be impressed. Maybe he might even get a bigger helping than usual.

And then it happens. Just when he’s starting to cut through the second row of people and machines, something hits his protective shield that causes it to dissolve. And then something hits him, wrapping around and around him. From his position on the ground, he can make out feet running towards him before he feels something prick his spine, and then he blacks out.

* * *

He wakes inside a white room. His room? No, his room doesn’t have a bed or a table or a chair. Two chairs. He’s sitting on one of them. He tries to move. He can’t. Looking down, he sees he is strapped to the arms and back of the chair. Oh. He is definitely not at the lab. This isn’t hurting him like the chairs there do.

Suddenly there is a loud hiss, and he looks up to see a door he hadn’t noticed before opening. A young lady looking about his age comes in carrying a tray of... food. And it smells wonderful. He’s squirming in his seat now, this is like nothing he’s ever seen at the lab. As she lays it down in front of him, his eyes scan the tray. On the plate he sees meat he knows is ham. A mushy white blob covered in a brown liquid next to it that he also could tell was dotted with chunks of what must also be meat. Next to that, a piece of what he knew was bread, but a different kind than he was given at the lab. It looked like a crescent moon. A bunch of small green balls in a little bowl. A bigger bowl of a golden liquid with orange and tan chunks in it. A glass of water stood in the corner of the tray. He felt his mouth salivating at it all. But then he remembered the doctors telling him something.

_“Don’t eat anything that isn’t given to you by us. You cannot trust it. It is poisonous. It will kill you.”_

He whines softly, looking longingly at the meal, tears coming to his eyes. 

“It’s not poisoned. I promise.” His head snaps upward, tears already slipping down his cheeks, to see the girl smiling kindly at him. He blinks as tears continue to flow, but he no longer feels sad. He has never seen anyone look at him that way. No one’s eyes twinkled with this... something that he could not name. Somehow he knew she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t the kind of person, the kind that lived outside the walls of the lab, that the doctors described. 

“Here, watch.” She gently takes the bread and pinches off a small piece from the end, which she then pops into her mouth, smiling wistfully. “Arcy never fails to make everything she cooks heavenly,” she sighs after swallowing. Then she gasps. “Oh! I almost forgot! You can’t eat if I don’t take those off and put these on.” She takes out a pair of metal bracelets. He shrinks back into the chair in fear until she smiles again, washing away his worries. “They don’t hurt. They just make sure you don’t accidentally hurt yourself, or anyone else for that matter. Your hands will be free to eat.” 

Deciding to trust her now, he relaxes and allows her to put on the bracelets. She was right, they don’t hurt at all. They’re a bit snug and cool on his wrists, but the most they do is beep once after they lock. When they’re secured, the girl presses a button he hadn’t seen before on the other side of the table, and his arms are suddenly free from the armrests. He rubs them a bit before remembering the food in front of him. That’s right, he can eat now. Still he looks at the girl one more time, just to make sure. She smiles and nods, and with that, he digs in. 

He starts with the meat. Oh, it’s like nothing he’s ever had before. It’s sweet and almost melts in his mouth. He’s eating with his fingers of course, because he’s never known any other way. He sees some strange metal tool on the tray and wonders if that’s what he’s supposed to use. It doesn’t matter though. The girl doesn’t seem to be repulsed by it. In fact, when he looks up, she’s beaming.

“I _told_ them you needed this,” she says simply, and deciding he didn’t care much what she meant at the moment, he continued to eat. She allowed him to do so in silence, until he was done with both the meat and the squishy white stuff and had moved onto the green balls (he had had enough of bread in the lab to want to eat that before he was done with everything else), and then began to speak again.

“I’ve been told to ask you a few very simple questions, but I won’t if you aren’t ready,” she says, a gentle smile still on her face. “Do you want to wait for another day?” He blinks at her for a moment before shaking his head. He doesn’t mind, as long as they’re simple enough. The girl’s smile brightens. “I promise this won’t take long,” she tells him, and then picks up a clipboard that he hadn’t noticed before. She must have come in with it. After looking it over, she places it down on the table in front of her and starts to write on it. Her deep orange ponytail falls over her shoulder as she bends over it slightly. After a moment she looks up and smiles yet again.

“First I want to introduce myself, since I haven’t done that yet. My name is Zelda. I work here with my father. I volunteered to do your initial acclimations, which is what this is. I’m really only a junior officer, but I convinced my father to let me do it. Do you have a name?”

He is sipping at the water, nice and cool, when the first question is posed. He swallows the liquid before looking back down at his tray and starting to fiddle with the tool they gave him. “I don’t know.” His voice cracks a bit, as this is the first time he has used his voice in several days. “The doctors don’t call me anything. But when they talk about me to each other they say ‘patient redacted three.’ I don’t know what that means.” 

He hears more scratches of a pen on paper, but doesn’t look up. Instead he begins to stir the golden broth in the bigger bowl with the tool, a small metal stick with a shape at the end resembling what his hands do to collect water from the faucet. When he gets it. When he earns it. He is fetched from his thoughts by Zelda’s voice again.

“Well, do you like it when they call you that?” she asks, frowning this time, but not with disapproval. Something else he can’t quite put his finger on. 

He stares at her blankly for a moment, wondering why she is asking his opinion. No one has ever done that before. It takes him a bit to decide on an answer, but he knows it’s the right one. “No,” he states simply.

“Well, I don’t like it either. Do you have any ideas as to what you do want to be called?”

Suddenly something comes to his memory. Something that must have been lost for a long time, and he wasn’t quite sure where it came from. “Red,” he said simply. He truly had no idea where it came from. But somehow it felt right. Zelda smiled again, though this time he saw something else besides kindness in her eyes. This he could name. Sadness. Maybe he should say sorry and think of something else. But he couldn’t think of anything, and she was already talking and writing things down again. 

“Red. I like that.” He had a feeling she didn’t, but he knew better than to argue with people. When she was done writing things down, he, Red, waited for her next question to come. And come it did.

“Alright Red, the hard part’s over. The rest of the questions are super quick and easy. Just yes or no. No need to explain. And if you don’t want to answer, just tell me and we’ll move on.” Zelda’s words calmed Red, he had begun to feel overwhelmed with all of these new types of questions. This would be simpler. This he knew how to do. After affirming that he was ready, he went back to his food and started to lift some of the liquid out of the bowl with the tool, thinking he had a good idea of how it worked. And he was right, but it was new and he spilled a bit of it onto the tray. His eyes bulged in fear as he wordlessly looked up at Zelda, waiting for the shouting, the impact on his head. But it never came. She just threw another one of her smiles at him. 

“You haven’t used a spoon before, have you? You’ve got the right idea! You just need practice. We can help you with that.” She marks another note on her clipboard. As she does, Red begins to practice lifting the liquid out of the bowl with the spoon. Zelda waits patiently for him until he finally manages to bring some of the contents up to his mouth and shove it in. As soon as he swallows, it isn’t just the marvelous taste, but also the feeling of accomplishment that turns the corners of his mouth upward. Zelda’s face brightens even more and she excitedly writes another note on her clipboard. When she’s done, she looks very happy, and Red can’t help but start to soak it in, this wonderful feeling of being light as a feather. 

“Alright Red, are you ready for your next question?” Zelda asks. Red nods, but he feels the change in her tone from light to somber, and it lessens his confidence. “Alright. Do you know where the place you’ve been living before now is?” 

Red starts to notice that he is too full to continue, and puts down his spoon, his default expression of neutrality back on his face. He didn’t have to think hard about this one. “No,” he says simply, and Zelda nods silently as she starts to write, without pause now. Still, Red knows that he is safe. She isn’t one of the doctors. So he stays calm and ready for each of her questions.

“Okay. My next question is about when we found you. You were attacking troops. Was that the first time you had done that?”

“Yes.”

“Were you under the impression of being trapped at any time in the place where you came from?”

“...Yes.” That one took a moment of thinking. He didn’t much like the question, but he wanted to be helpful.

“Were you deprived of food or drink at any time?”

“Yes.” He was starting to not like the questions. Zelda seemed to pick up on it, and stopped writing to smile at him reassuringly. 

“Alright Red, we’re done for today. If we have any more questions we’ll save them for another day. I promise to check in on you one more time before lights out.”

“You… you’ll check on me?”

“Of course!”

“Will you be back tomorrow? I don’t like it when they leave me alone for a whole day.”

This time Zelda smiled so warmly it seemed to fill the room. “Of course. I’ll make sure you never have to spend an entire day alone anymore.” She looked down at the tray in front of Red. “Are you finished?”

“Yes, I think so. I’m full now.”

“I’m glad. I have to take it with me, rules say so, but you’ll be given breakfast tomorrow morning, don’t worry.” With this, she gently takes the tray and stands up with her clipboard under her arm and heads for the door. Red feels sad that she has to go, but if she said she would be back, then he will wait for her. It opens with a hiss, and she turns and gives him one last big smile before disappearing outside, the door sealing shut behind her. Immediately the rest of the restraints on him release, and the metal that bound him retracts into the back of the chair itself. He is free. Well, not quite. He’s still stuck in the room, and Zelda didn’t take off the bracelets. 

Red realizes now that he is very tired and sore from sitting in one position for so long, and so he drags himself over to the bed and plops down on it. It’s surprisingly comfortable, but maybe that’s because he’s never had a bed to sleep on before. He lays his head on the pillow, and drifts off to sleep…

* * *

“You didn’t ask him the last one.”

“He would have panicked. I knew that. You knew that. You were watching everything on the cameras.”

“You are too soft Zelda.”

“No, Father, I am simply the only one in this entire building that is empathetic enough to do a good job at this sort of thing.”

Zelda stands angrily across the command room, glaring at her father, the head general. Not even his highest officers had the guts to talk to him like this. But Zelda was not just a junior officer. She was General Rhoam’s daughter. And she did not back down from a battle that needed to be fought. If it weren’t for the fact that it would look like favoritism, she could have risen straight to a general for her perfect balance of gall and goodness. She was brilliant with strategy and deadly with any weapon you threw at her. Zelda had more fight in her than all of Rhoam’s armies combined. She knows this. And she uses it.

“You know that if you sent one of your men in there the boy would have been too terrified to talk at all. It’s a miracle I got so much out of him. Asking him about the other four would have been disastrous. _You know this.”_ And he does. They both do. 

Zelda falls silent a moment to let her words sink in before continuing, her voice less angry now that she can sense her father starting to consider her argument. “We have Three already. Three was supposed to be the second deadliest.”

“He _is_ the second deadliest. You saw what happened to our troops.”

“And yet we have him. And he feels safer than he ever has in his life. Father, you cannot afford to remove me from this job. Think about Two. Two will be worse. Far worse. Even a hint of aggression is supposed to set him off. One may not be much of a problem, but Four will be manipulative. He’ll play tricks. You can’t send in one of the brutes, he’ll have them begging for mercy even with his psychic abilities completely suppressed. He needs someone on his level. Someone whose intellect he can respect. _And don’t get me started on Five.”_

Zelda decides that her work is done, and without permission turns on her heel to leave the room. But she stops at the sound of her father’s voice once more.

“Very well, Zelda. You are to conduct acclimations and interrogations with them from now on. Just please. I ask this as a father, not your general.” Zelda turns back to see her father looking at her with pain in his eyes, pain that only comes from years of seeing so many people close to him be taken from him forever. “Please be careful.” 

Zelda nods solemnly, and walks out.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
